While most attention today is on the State of the Union speech from last night, thought I'd take a moment and reflect on something many Americans probably give ourselves too much credit for.

We like to think of ourselves as being the most free, the most egalitarian people on the planet. We like to think our treatment of women, for example, is more advanced and civilized than other parts of the world.

And there is some truth to that. Atrocities such as honor killings and female genital mutilations are not part of our culture. No woman is going to be arrested or flogged for daring to drive a car as they are in Saudi Arabia (you know Saudi Arabia, our "moderate" Arab ally).

However one area it would surprise Americans to learn we lag behind much of the rest of the world is the participation of women in politics. When it comes to holding elective office, especially at the top, it turns out the good old US of A is mediocre at best.

I say it would surprise Americans based on a reaction to a Jimmy Fallon Tonight Show monologue I happened to catch one night while flipping through channels. It happened to be the day the new Congress was being sworn in. Fallon made the following statement:

"The newly elected congressmen and women from the midterm elections were sworn in today. This Congress will be the most diverse ever, with 104 women, 46 blacks, 12 Asian-Americans, and two Native Americans. Even the dolls on the 'It's a Small World' Disney ride said, 'Not bad.'"As you might imagine the audience ate it up. I half expected chants of "USA! USA! USA!" to erupt the applause was so enthusiastic.

Contrarian that I am, my immediate reaction was something along the lines of, "yes that is good progress, but let's not pat ourselves on the back too much. I bet we don't compare that well to the rest of the world, especially those we would consider countries most like us, and especially when it comes to representation of women". Okay, my thoughts may not have been that extensive at that late hour, but it was what I was feeling.

First I looked at how the female representation in Congress compares to other countries national legislative bodies. The latest listing from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) can be found here.As you can see the USA is well down the list. We are tied with Panama for 75th overall for percentage of women in the national legislature. Rwanda is first, followed by Bolivia, Andorra and Cuba. Yes, that Cuba. The rankings and numbers are as of December 1st, 2014, but they do account for the November mid-term elections and use the results of that election for the American numbers.

Closer to home we find Mexico is 18th and Canada ranks 52nd. And you'll notice the rankings are based on representation in the lower chamber if a country's legislature has an upper and lower body such as ours. And Canada's upper chamber has nearly 40% female representation, almost double the percentage found in its lower house. The United Kingdom comes in 60th.

So yes, progress has been made but we have a long way to go.

The other area I looked at was how many countries have already had a female head of state. And I mean recently and an elected leader, not a Queen.

Here is a listing of countries that have had a female head of state. However it doesn't seem to differentiate between royal leaders, women who held ceremonial head of state positions, and those who were truly the day to day "working" leaders of their country.

A second listing here list the females themselves who held the positions. From the titles and descriptions you can get a good idea of who was holding a ceremonial post and who was actually leading the country. From this listing a partial listing of countries who have elected females to lead the country:

Israel

India

Germany

Great Britain

Canada

Turkey

Indonesia

Pakistan

Philippines

Nicaragua

Brazil

Chile

Argentina

New Zealand

Australia

Ireland

Finland

South Korea

Iceland

Costa Rica

Slovakia

You'll notice quite a diverse representation here. It's not just our fellow compatriots from Western Civilization. There are muslim countries, Asian countries, nations big and small who have already elected a female head of state in their recent history. Meanwhile our country may get around to electing a female President in 2016, but that is not guaranteed. Hillary Clinton may be the front runner in polls today, but from here to November 2016 is an eternity in politics.

One of the rallying cries of the political right in the United States is the idea of "American Exceptionalism". Generally this is a belief that we are different and better than other countries and peoples on the planet. We are truly God's chosen people. The shining beacon on the hill for the rest of the world to admire and aspire to.

And let me say that there are some positive aspects we can attribute to this concept. We were after all the first modern experiment in democracy. We were the inspiration for the French Revolution and other revolutions and "evolutions" to freedom and democracy around the world that followed in its wake. The concept of liberty and freedom inherent in our Revolution has been an inspiration to "freedom fighters" around the world ever since.

Unfortunately however there are other ways where American Exceptionalism runs in the other direction. Recently I was thinking of this in terms of slavery.

If you asked the average American about the history of slavery in the United States it might go something like this:

Slavery existed in the American colonies because it existed in the countries that colonized America

Slavery was bad

We fought a Civil War to end slavery and passed a Constitutional Amendment ending it once the war was over

Slavery is over, there was some discrimination afterwards, but we had a civil rights movement, we are back to being the beacon on the hill, so shut up already. USA! USA! USA!

If you are a true America loving conservative, like former Representative Michelle Bachmann, you even gloss over the time between the Revolution and the Civil War, and boast of how the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly until slavery was abolished. No mention of how many generations that took or the Civil War required to end it.

What they never taught you, or at least never taught me, was how America lagged behind the other nations of the Western Hemisphere, as well as the countries of Europe, in abolishing slavery. And most of those countries didn't require a bloody Civil War to accomplish it.

American History was one of my favorite subjects in school. I even achieved a perfect score on the American History achievement test, which is mentioned by way of credentials, not boastfully. So it's not that I fell asleep in class that day and missed it. They just didn't teach it.

Instead we discover that the countries of Europe and North and South America had mostly abolished slavery before our Civil War began. Some of them did it incrementally, others all at once. Some did it voluntarily, some required "persuasion" or payments from such external forces as the British Empire to see the light. A partial summary is noted below, while a more comprehensive listing can be found here.

1824 - Mexico (and in 1830 extended the ban on slavery to the Texas territory - and of course when Texas declared itself independent it re-established slavery in 1836)

1831 - Bolivia

1834 - 1843 - Britain outlaws slavery for itself and eventually all its colonies

1848 - all French and Dutch colonies

1850 - Brazil and Colombia

1854 - Peru and Venezuela

1861 - the year our Civil War began - Russia frees all its serfs

So there you have it. This is what they didn't teach you in school, and probably couldn't in today's political climate in most states even if they wanted to. America was exceptional alright, exceptional in how long we held on to the "peculiar institution" of slavery, exceptional in how we required such a large and bloody struggle in order to end it.

And that doesn't even begin to deal with the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction. It doesn't take into account the KKK, Jim Crow laws, separate but equal, redlining, and all the other ways black people were "kept in their place" after slavery was abolished.

But the proponents of American Exceptionalism will keep patting themselves on the back and giving themselves credit for ending slavery.

My mother once made the comment, probably when I was a young teen, that the most dangerous thing in the world is a religious zealot. Unfortunately through the years she is proved correct over and over again.

We can have debates about religion in general. We can have debates about which religion is more violent or more backwards or more intolerant than others. And we can all find evidence, much too plentiful evidence, to support any viewpoint in those debates.

Does it matter though? Does it matter if more people have been killed in the name of Jesus than in the name of Mohammed? Does it matter if the names of God and Jesus are invoked by Crusaders, or the perpetrators of the Inquisition, or those blowing up women's health clinics, while others invoke Allah and Mohammed when carrying out acts of terror? Is one representative of their religion while the other is an aberration or an anachronism?

To the victims I don't believe the denomination of the zealot is all that important. Nor does it matter to the victim how representative the barbaric murderers are of their religion. Dead in the name of religion is still dead.

Still, from an historical perspective, Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity. So while there is still hatred and terror and heinous acts done in the name of Jesus, there does not appear to be the organized terror groups we see today in the Muslim world. Which still paints with much too broad a brush.

Perhaps what is needed is a Muslim Reformation. If Islam is going to follow a similar historic arc as Christianity, then we should be ready for one any century now.

I'd just like to see things get to a point where you can dispute a point of the Koran, or poke fun at an Ayatollah, or the Prophet himself, and not have your life targeted.

The cartoon South Park shows Jesus as a very secular character and has used him to poke fun at others as well as himself. Sure many good Christians are mightily offended, but to my knowledge no fatwah has been issued against the creators of the show.

When every religion can take a joke and laugh at itself the world will be a much better place to live in.

I usually don't like posts to be simple rants on a topic. But today I feel like ranting.

Don't know what to say about the state of our country, sitting here watching the steady snow fall from a nor'easter hitting on the biggest travel day of the year.

It is so sad. And so predictable. And so prevalent. Good thing the Supreme Court decided institutional racism was over in America. Too bad they forgot to tell Darren Wilson and the Ferguson police department. And Robert McCulloch the prosecutor who ran the grand jury like he was Wilson's defense attorney.

Point automatic rifles at federal officials on behalf of a rancher breaking laws in Nevada and you're a hero and a patriot and a freedom fighter. Wonder how that would work out for a black rancher and some armed supporters?

I don't know what happened that August day in Ferguson. I wasn't there. But from the various accounts I have my suspicions what transpired but I'll admit that is rank speculation.

But what seems irrefutable to me is that at the end of it all there was a white cop chasing an unarmed black man who he likened to a "demon" and "Hulk Hogan". So afraid for his life and safety he pursued the subject and didn't call for backup.

And it seems obvious that Michael Brown had essentially surrendered at the end. Already shot, wounded, arms raised. Only the cop and one eyewitness said Brown was charging menacingly at the end before the fatal shots were fired. And that one witness wrote diary entries that they were in Ferguson that day to see if there was a reason they should start looking at blacks as people rather than "n*****s". Really credible witness there.

Other witnesses seemed pretty unified in saying Brown had given up and had his arms raised in a surrender posture, not in a threatening manner. But their accounts don't count for anything it seems.

And I find it very unsettling that the words Officer Wilson uses to describe Brown very closely mirror the descriptions given by the LA officers who beat Rodney King. Even catching them in the act on video tape wasn't enough to convict them. All you have to do is play the "scary big black man" card. It's the stand your ground and police's equivalent of "get out of jail free".

Sure I'm Darren Wilson and I'm 6'4" and in no way a toothpick. But that demon was 6'5" and big and black and scary. Did I mention he was black?

It is obvious Wilson did not see Michael Brown as a human being. He was something else. Something scary and menacing that needed to be put down.

I cried on Inauguration Day in 2009 thinking how far this country had come and how wonderful it was to see America's promise being fulfilled in some huge, meaningful way.

So here we sit late afternoon Eastern Time the day before the pivotal mid-terms.

And I'll admit I have no clue what's going to happen.

I read some polls. I read some analyses.

And we're either holding New Hampshire, North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa Senate seats, and therefore the Senate, or they are all going down the tubes along with Alaska, Arkansas and Louisiana.

West Virginia, Montana and most likely South Dakota are already gone.

The odds of flipping seats in Kansas, Kentucky and Georgia seem to grow more remote.

I know I'm an optimist at heart but I truly don't know what to make of all this.

And I hate people who try to explain why the polls will be wrong. Come on we laughed at the great "unskewers" in 2012 who were convinced Romney was going to win despite being 5 points down nationally in most polls and trailing in every key battle ground state except North Carolina. So we can't turn around and start unskewing in 2014. Facts matter.

The only glimmer I can rationally hang my hat on is that it seems in recent mid-terms the polls have under clubbed the eventual Democratic vote in Senate races by about 3%. That would make a world of difference.

Likewise in my state of Connecticut everything is also shrouded in uncertainty. We either keep a Democratic governor and large majority in the General Assembly, or we lose the governor's seat, maybe one or two of the other statewide races, and lose a lot of seats in the General Assembly. The polls are very tight, but the mood of the electorate seems so sour.

So here we are. My gut tells me the Democrats hold on here in Connecticut by a narrow margin. I'm worried about one of the local state representative for whom I serve as campaign treasurer. She serves a district with a lot of farm land and hunters. And they recruited a young pro-gun candidate to run against her because of her support for the gun laws that were passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook school tragedy.

My gut tells me she survives. But I'm worried.

My gut tells me that Democrats hold on to the U.S. Senate - barely.

My guts tells me the Democrats hold on to all 5 Congressional seats in Connecticut.

So it looks like the Secret Service is in trouble. There have been a number of embarrassing incidents over recent years.

The most recent was someone being able to scale the fence around the White House, run across the lawn and make it all the way inside the front door before being stopped.

This followed such shortcomings as the 2012 prostitution scandal where agents partied with prostitutes in Colombia during an advance trip, a shooting incident in 2011 where the agency took four days to confirm or acknowledge that shots had been fired that struck the White House, and the 2009 incident where a couple "crashed" a state dinner at the White House.

Now some may point out that these problems are institutional and started in the Bush years as the memory of the assassination attempt on President Reagan faded from memory.

But you just know at some point a conservative pundit or talking head, or at least a Fox News panelist, will suggest the issue might be that the Secret Service is demoralized. After all they are being asked to protect, and potentially lay down their own lives, for a President they just "know" is not really Constitutionally qualified to be president. No where in their job description does it say they have to protect Kenyans. No wonder they aren't on top of their game.

Just saying, is it that far fetched to imagine someone at Fox News, or some other right wing sites, at least giving voice to that type of speculation?

In retrospect I should have known better. At the time I was relatively new to Twitter so tended not to wade into Twitter wars on political issues. It is so easy, especially if trying to be humorous or satirical or sarcastic, to be misunderstood when reducing your deepest political thoughts to 140 characters.

I especially try to steer clear of issues that I see as minor flashpoints guaranteed to cause polarization. If I'm going to get involved in a flame war it has to be over an important issue, not some sideshow.

So by all of my standards I should have stayed away from comments regarding what was happening at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada. For those who have had more sense than me, or have forgotten after lo these many months, I'll provide a brief synopsis of the issue:

Rancher Bundy in Nevada has let his herd of cattle graze on federal land without permission for over 20 years

He refuses to pay the fees required to do so; these fees were instituted by one President Ronald Reagan in 1986

There have been several court rulings concerning the issue; all have gone against Mr. Bundy

Finally the Bureau of Land Management sent Mr. Bundy a letter essentially threatening to confiscate any of his cattle found on federal property unless he paid the required fees (which by the way over 16,000 ranchers have done over the years); and I believe they began to do so

Mr. Bundy complained and become a cause celebre to the right wing, conservative pundits and Fox News; armed militia members showed up on his property to protect him from the big bad "gummint"

Not the type of issue I take great interest in usually. One I leave to the internet to fight out while I worry about income inequality and a better, more secure life for the middle class in this country.

Unfortunately I also tend to have a low tolerance for bullshit and intellectual dishonesty. And this issue is just dripping with it. All of these people portraying Mr. Bundy as a hero are so quick to judge others for even the most minor infractions or for stealing from taxpayers. So stupid me, after reading some comments about this issue by people I follow on Twitter, decided to make a comment and use the hashtag #BundyRanch which was the tag being used for comments concerning it.

My comment was simple enough: "So new right wing hero is breaking law signed by Reagan and stealing from every American taxpayer. #BundyRanch"

And it was actually retweeted by a couple of folks, a very uncommon occurrence for me as I do not do a lot on Twitter. And now I know why.

I then received a response: "Only in Libtard Land. He has stolen nothing from me and provided me with food and milk. @SenatorReid stealing NV 4 Chinese"

fyi - that last part about Harry Reid stealing Nevada for the Chinese is a reference to the latest right wing nut job conspiracy to flare up over this Bundy Ranch issue. Namely that the only reason they are trying to get Bundy to stop using the public lands is that the government wants the property to build a solar power array in the desert, that the company supplying the solar panels is Chinese, and Harry Reid's son is somehow connected to the Chinese company and stands to make a lot of money off of it.

And indeed if you enter "Harry Reid stealing Nevada for Chinese" online, you get a lot of entries popping up - almost all of them belonging to right wing sites repeating the accusation. You have to search harder to find links like the one here that debunk the story. Turns out yes there are proposals for solar sites in Nevada. But none of them are for the land Bundy is using without permission, nor anywhere close to it. Nevada is a big state after all.

But I was intrigued by the beginning of the response. "Only in Libtard Land". Supposedly this meant that only a "libtard" would label Mr. Bundy a thief rather than a true patriot.

I looked up "libtard" in the urban dictionary. As you can tell the entries are not complimentary to people who would consider themselves liberals. By the tone and words used you can tell the entries were written by people who are, well let's be nice and simply call them, "conservatives".

They paint a stereotypical picture of liberals as rich elitists who live in a fantasy world where people can get along and work together. Reality however, in the view of these authors, is a conservative bitch. In reality people are not good-natured, don't want to work together or work towards a common goal. So the "libtard" must advocate for government control and laws and regulations to try and enforce their naive utopia.

Wow. Projection thy name is conservative. I'll leave to another posting, hell it could take several, to deconstruct the pejoratives associated with "libtard". For now though let's accept the label and try to imagine what life is like in "Libtard Land".

You may be living in Libtard Land if:

every individual is treated equally and with respect, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, gender or sexual orientation

every individual has the opportunity to receive a good, free public education through the 12th grade

every individual has access to quality medical care, and access to the care and the quality of medical care received, is not dependent on the size of your bank account, or that of your parents

nobody goes bankrupt or loses their home because they or a family member becomes ill or has a devastating accident

every individual has ready access to necessary information, whether through adequately funded and maintained public libraries, or affordable internet, cable or satellite facilities

full-time jobs are available that pay a living wage for every individual who is physically and mentally able

the air you breathe is clean, the water you drink is potable, and the food you eat is safe from disease and pathogens

military solutions are always the last resort, not the first option in foreign policy

Is that reality? Not even close. Is it the ideal we should be striving for? Absolutely. And the free market does not by itself get you there. Yes those pesky government laws, policies and regulations are needed to help create equal opportunity for all, not just for those that start out ahead of the game due to fortune of birth.

So I will admit to living in Libtard Land. In the future I'll try to imagine what conservative utopia might be and see if we can post some dispatches from there.

What should it be called? ConservoCretin Country? ConservaCretin County? Feel free to offer suggestions. There have to be better ones.

The unfortunate events in Ferguson, Missouri, yet another shooting of an unarmed black male by white police, along with some other recent shootings of blacks by cops, have led to increased discussion of the legacy of race in this country. It has also resurrected the discussion of "white privilege".

For those not familiar, white privilege is the notion that white people, in a society such as the United States, receive certain deference or privileges based solely on the color of their skin. The evidence can run from the trivial, blacks more likely to be followed in a store when shopping for example, to the more profound, such as blacks more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than whites for the same offense.

While some whites acknowledge the existence of white privilege, many do not. Some doubt its very existence or downplay its significance. For what it's worth here is the perspective of a white, middle-class, middle-aged American male who also used to be a "white privilege skeptic".

Growing up and in my earlier adult years I did not believe in white privilege. I'm sure my reaction to the notion was similar to that of many middle-class white males. My thoughts would have been something like this:

"What privilege? Nobody handed me anything on a silver platter. I had to work for my grades. I had to work to get into a good college. I didn't get in to any school because Daddy gave a big donation or knew the right person. And I had to find my own job. Mummy and Daddy didn't have one waiting for me at the family business, or put in a word with an uncle or a family friend to get me a job. I've earned what I have. So what privilege did I get?"

I even recall an incident sophomore year in college, sitting in our dorm room with my roommate, an aspiring pre-med student from Long Island. One of the freshmen on the floor came in to introduce himself. He was African-American. We got to talking and he told us he too hoped to go to medical school. Of course he threw in that he had to achieve a 2.75 GPA or so to insure getting in.

After he left my roommate looked at me with a smirk, shaking his head. He stated something along the lines of, "do you know what happens if I apply to med schools with a 2.75 GPA? I might as well not bother if that's what I have." And shook his head some more.

Because while he and I could acknowledge that many blacks had been disadvantaged and deserved some breaks to account for that, we chalked it up more to poverty than skin color. Sure, cut someone some slack if they came from a bad neighborhood with bad schools. But don't give breaks if they came from a suburban neighborhood and a decent school (as the aforementioned freshman had) just because they were black. Due to our middle class background we didn't see ourselves as privileged. We couldn't see where anybody had paved any paths for us.

This ambivalence concerning affirmative action and to the concept of white privilege stayed with me most of my adult life. It began to change when I served on the Board of Education in my town in Connecticut.

About the same time as my service on the school board began the Sheff vs. O'Neill case had made its way through the courts. A brief summary for those who don't want to follow the link:

In 1989 several school children and their parents sued the state of Connecticut alleging that as urban and minority students they were not receiving an equal education compared to other children in Connecticut

In 1996 the Connecticut Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs and stated that every child in Connecticut was guaranteed an equal education as a constitutional right

In 1997 Connecticut's General Assembly (state legislature) passed laws in response to the Sheff ruling to attempt to eliminate racial and socio-economic inequalities in the public schools

Among the efforts supported under the legislation were seminars or group sessions within the schools concerning diversity. Our school board formed an ad-hoc committee to implement this aspect of the law. One of our board members (the only person of color on the board) ran diversity training and workshops as part of his business. He was a natural selection to head up the committee and run the workshops. They wanted another board member to participate as well. I don't know what the reasoning was, but I was asked to join the committee. With no real enthusiasm I agreed.

To say that the experience was educational and eye-opening is an understatement. The first group as I recall consisted solely of staff members from the district. Later groups would include parents and administrators.

The first group focused on the changing demographics of our town and our schools. As with many communities we were seeing a growth in the Hispanic population in particular and minorities in general, while the staff remained almost exclusively white. We had a mix of "old guard" teachers, and younger Hispanic staff who were involved with ESL and other support services, in the first group. We met several times over a some months exploring diversity, understanding, etc. The discussions were very interesting and informative, at least to me who was in a position to really sit back and observe the interactions and perspectives of this diverse group.

One day the topic was white privilege. We watched a video of an Oprah show where racism and white privilege had been the focus. That did open me up to the concept of white privilege and lead to much discussion in the group. But it was a story told by my fellow board member during the group discussion after watching the video that somehow really drove it home to me.

He related a story of one of his first jobs at a corporate headquarters in New York City. I believe this was in the late 1960's or early 1970's. As you may imagine there were not too many people of color in the office at that time.

There was a really good soul food restaurant not too far from where their office was. So occasionally the minority employees got together to go there for lunch. At first they would meet up at someone's desk. Once they had all assembled they would then go out to lunch. As I recall we are not talking about more than 5 or 6 people, maybe even less.

One afternoon after he had returned from one of these trips to the soul food restaurant my colleague was approached by his boss. The boss began by asking if everything was alright. The response was sure why do you ask?

The answer was that "they", the others in the office, had noticed the black people congregating and talking together and then taking off. Just wanted to be sure there were no issues, they weren't upset about anything, etc. My colleague answered that no they were just meeting to go out to lunch together to a local soul food restaurant.

From that day on whenever their group wanted to go out they always met on the sidewalk a short ways from the office before going to the restaurant. No sense making their bosses and co-workers nervous seeing the black employees together in one place, probably talking about "them".

That anecdote is what finally drove home the truth of white privilege to me. How silly. How stupid. And how exhausting. If a group of white employees ever gathered together before going off for lunch, or for any reason, would anyone have cared? Would anyone have noticed? Would it have made anyone nervous? Would anyone have mentioned it to them? No. No. No. And no.

From that day it was like the scales fell from my eyes. I won't pretend to be able to fully understand, or to "get it", but I can empathize and at least understand at an intellectual level. And I can certainly see the many ways, both mundane and profound, that white privilege asserts itself in our society.

It's that time again. Election time. We just finished with a Republican primary in my home state for the gubernatorial nomination.

Both candidates promised the usual crap - they will cut taxes AND balance the budget.

How? By cutting spending naturally. And of course giving the "job creators" the keys to the store so they can steal us blind and "trickle down" some of their magic to us.

But mostly the promise is to "cut spending".

Not just any spending mind you - but "wasteful spending". The term was even highlighted in one of the candidates ads.

How easy. How conveeeeeeeeeenient. How utterly ridiculous.

"I'm going to cut wasteful spending". It's the easiest promise to make in a campaign. And the most bogus.

Notice they never tell you what constitutes "wasteful" spending. And that's by design, because let's face it, everyone has a different definition of what government spending is "wasteful". One person's waste is another person's necessity and all that.

So the candidate doesn't tell you specifically what they will cut. He or she simply tells you they'll cut wasteful spending and leaves the rest to each voter's imagination. And each voter naturally assumes the candidate means the spending that benefits other, less deserving, people. People, who unlike them, haven't earned the government spending that comes their way.

So, the candidate gets to sound resolute and like a tough budget hawk. And not one specific promise has been made. Zero courage is required to come out against "wasteful spending". Courage would come from defining it - during a campaign.

This past Sunday my wife and I put in a rear appearance at Mass. It wasn't what some might consider a traditional old-fashioned sitting in the pews kinds of Mass.

No, this was a service at an outdoor grotto at a local Shrine here in the northwest corner of Connecticut. Even so, it was still a Mass, with a priest, some singers, communion, offertory, the whole works.

We like going to this particular venue in the summer time. The weather was nice and it's a pretty setting. Plus the priests who do the services at this Shrine tend to stay away from the political and deal mostly with the spiritual side of the religion. The intermingling of the spiritual and the political is what had driven us away from regular attendance at mass at other churches in our area. There was no overt politics associated with this service, but the undertones were there anyway in interesting ways.

By way of context, we probably meet the criteria of "lapsed Catholics". Though technically I can't be a lapsed Catholic. I was raised and confirmed as a Methodist and have never converted to any other religion. Still ever since marriage to my Catholic wife (who attended parochial school through the 8th grade), and raising our sons as Catholics, my adult religious life, such as it is, has been spent attending Catholic services.

That is until some years ago when we just couldn't take it anymore. The steady preaching about the War on Christianity, the War on Christmas, the War against Marriage, the evils of the homosexual agenda, the terrible sin of abortion, got to be more than we could stomach. We stopped going. The last straw was when we attended a service shortly before the 2008 election because our beloved dog was fighting cancer and had survived a surgery. Like many we had made a bargain, "get her through this operation and we'll go to Mass".

The priest stood up there and said the Church would never tell anyone how to vote. He then proceeded to instruct the parishioners on how to evaluate candidates for public office. He basically said when it comes to choosing a candidate, "he/she can be on the right side of the issues of poverty, war and peace, social justice, capital punishment, but if they're on the wrong side of the issues of sex, marriage and abortion, then forget it". Words to that effect anyway. And of course the converse, a candidate could disagree with the Church's teaching on every other subject, but if they had the marriage being between a man and a woman and the abortion issue correct, that was your candidate.

Needless to say this upset us greatly. Since then we have even stopped being "Christmas/Easter Catholics" feeling no compunction to go to services even on those most holy of Christian holidays. Still, especially for my wife, all those years of parochial school and Catholic upbringing does exert a tug on the conscience. So in the summer we tend to make it to the shrine now and then to attend Mass. The recent passing of a good friend's brother probably was the immediate impetus.

So there we were. Now there was nothing political about the Mass itself or the homily. But I did find the bumper stickers on some cars in the parking lot telling. And later when we visited the shrine's gift shop so my wife could buy a sympathy card for our friend, it got even better.

The first sticker that caught my eye as we pulled into the parking lot was one of those "I Love My Wife" bumper stickers. For those who don't know those come from the Promise Keepers. This is a mostly right wing Christian movement of men whose basic tenet is that the general direction of society is anti-marriage, anti-fidelity, anti-family, anti-religion, but in the face of those tremendous pressures these men are not afraid to remain faithful to God, country and spouse and bravely put that on a bumper sticker for the world to see.

Color me cynical, but if someone feels the need to publicly proclaim they love their wife and put it on a bumper sticker, well if I'm the wife I've got a good lawyer on speed dial.

The second bumper sticker I saw was after we parked the car and were walking out of the parking lot to the service. "Repeal Obamacare" it said. Yes, because as we all know Jesus was all about denying medical coverage to 15 million of your fellow citizens. The fact that many of those who now have coverage thanks to "Obamacare" are poor, working poor or those with pre-existing conditions, just makes it more likely they would draw the condemnation of the Son of God. I guess.

Okay at this point you could make the argument that these were just two cars, two parishioners among hundreds in attendance and not reflective of the mindset or politics of the entire group. A fair enough argument, and for all I know, true. I wouldn't want to generalize and paint everyone at the Mass with the same brush.

Some good insight into the overall feelings of the shrine and its followers however could be found in the gift shop. My wife went in following the service to buy a sympathy card as noted above. While she perused the selections I scanned the two shelves of books offered for sale that stood nearby. Most of the offerings were religious in theme, but there was one shelf with the tag "Politics".

On that shelf there was one of Tom Friedman's forgettable tomes about the Earth being flat, hot and crowded. Brilliant. And somehow one of Paul Krugman's books made it on the shelf. I suppose to give a passing nod to fighting poverty and caring about poor people.

However the following were more representative of the books found on the "Politics" shelf:

Treason by Ann Coulter

Going Rogue by Sarah Palin

Two, count them two, books by Newt Gingrich

The other books by title seemed to point to being about the culture wars. I could feel the love for all of God's people just dripping off the shelf. I pointed the books out to my wife. She was especially upset seeing the Coulter book there. "She is so hateful." Indeed makes you wonder what her book is doing in a shop whose institution supposedly teaches "love thy neighbor".

As the final icing on the cake, as we got in our car and headed out there was a long line of cars making its way slowly down the narrow road from the Shrine to get back to the state road. We were behind a car displaying a bumper sticker identifying the driver as being a "Tea Party Patriot". Of course it was affixed to a Prius, which last I knew was widely ridiculed in conservative circles as the vehicle of liberal elites trying to sell us on that global warming hoax. So at least that person gets some points for some degree of independent thinking.

Again, I don't want to over-simplify and generalize as to the "typical" person attending services these days. Obviously from just the presence of me and my wife it would be dangerous to do so. But when every bumper sticker seen was associated with the politics of the Right, and almost all of the political books on the shelves in the gift shop likewise were from the Right, what conclusion can one draw?

So yes not everyone going to these services is conservative or right-wing. But people who are conservative and right-wing, and not overflowing with charity toward their fellow humans, certainly feel welcome there.